Latest news with #childsexualexploitation
Times
3 hours ago
- Times
Sarah Champion: I'm called racist for taking on grooming gangs
Sarah Champion did not go into politics to wage war against child sex abuse rings or become a voice for vulnerable teenage girls preyed on by gangs of men of predominantly Pakistani origin who groomed, trafficked and raped them. When she became the Labour MP for Rotherham she did not know they existed. 'I had been running the local children's hospice as CEO when I became an MP in 2012 and I remember reading an article about this 15-year-old Rotherham girl who had a baby by any of three different men and was seen as a little scrubber, and I thought that's not right. Then a girl was found dead in a river, and they said she'd gone mad. Finally, a young white girl came to us with a poorly baby and her boyfriend was a much older Asian man; the relationship seemed odd.' Champion became increasingly uneasy that she did not know what was going on in her own constituency. 'At one of my first council meetings there was an item under 'risky business' and no one would explain it … Then I was in parliament and there was a session at a select committee on child sexual exploitation and Jayne Senior [a social worker] was giving evidence and it was horrifying, I felt mortified that no one seemed to care. Afterwards she suggested we meet on a canal boat in secrecy, and she told me what had been going on.' Slowly, survivors began to contact Champion. 'They were all ages. I met someone in her early eighties in Rotherham who described it happening to her by a Pakistani-origin man when she was younger. I met another woman at the back of Costa Coffee in her early twenties who went through everything in detail. Gradually I was collecting all this information, but I didn't know what to do.' Senior gave her a list of the men she had reported as abusers and the list of people she thought were complicit in the cover-up. 'I went to the police and people in the council saying I had serious concerns about a number of people, but I didn't get any responses. It was hard to know who to trust and I was nervous of giving away girls' names away. My life became one of shadows and pseudonyms.' • Baroness Casey: I feel rage on behalf of the abused girls This was not a race issue for Champion. 'To me this was just child abuse. It wasn't an ethnicity thing. The names weren't typically white English names, but what mattered was they were perpetrators of horrendous crimes. I'm a sloppy lefty to my core; I believe in equality and diversity. I just saw them as criminals.' The MP strongly believes Rotherham police, councillors and social workers should have called out these men as abusers decades ago. 'If they had taken these cases seriously when they began being reported in the 1960s, rather than telling these women they were silly young girls, then there wouldn't have been the boil of frustration there is now. The criminals would have gone to jail, the story wouldn't have escalated across the country, the Pakistani community wouldn't be vilified as though all of them are walking around intent on abusing white girls. They have done a massive disservice to this country.' In no way, Champion says, should these young girls be expected to take the blame. 'I remember when I was 15 and my friends and I were so excited when one of us got an older boyfriend with a car, some children are enamoured by older men, they like feeling special — before it all goes wrong — but we need to protect them.' The Labour MP stresses that she does not think this is about paedophiles. 'This is about pubescent girls aged 10 to 15 who are being groomed, they aren't little kids, and that is partly why it is overlooked as there is confusion over the age of consent, but it is 16 and for a reason.' • Gangs raped 'lost' girls because no one cared Watching these abused children struggle, as they grow up, has changed her mind about prostitution. 'I would make it a criminal offence for men to buy sex and decriminalise the women. I shifted my view largely because of the girls in Rotherham. When they were no longer pubescent and their value started to drop, they were so damaged and desperate, many were forced to turn to prostitution. They didn't have the capacity for consent, either because of the violence or drugs or alcohol. 'Once I'd been told about it, I would see it everywhere walking round Rotherham, I thought how can everyone else not see. Then I began reading reports round the country and thinking that's another grooming gang, yet none of them called them out.' She started to believe there was a pattern to cases being reported not just in Rotherham but Rochdale, Telford and Oxford. In 2017, after the conviction of a sex-grooming gang in Newcastle upon Tyne who were largely of Pakistani origin, Champion cracked. 'I did the BBC Today programme because I became so frustrated. They called the day before and I said I am going to say they are Pakistani gangs and they were very concerned. I went on and it was fine, there were no recriminations, just supportive messages. Then The Sun got in touch, and I wrote a piece for them. And all hell broke loose.' Champion had written: 'Britain has a problem with British Pakistani men raping and exploiting white girls.' She quit as shadow equalities minister under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, apologising for the 'extremely poor choice of words in [the] article'. She initially claimed her piece had been edited and 'stripped of nuance' but a spokesman for The Sun, which is published by News UK, the parent company of The Times, said: 'Sarah Champion's column … was approved by her team and her adviser twice contacted us thereafter to say she was 'thrilled' with the piece and it 'looked great'.' Champion later said in an interview: 'What I'm really interested in is misogyny. It occurs in many different forms, but the most obvious forms are happening within some ethnic minority communities. I'm thinking female genital mutilation, forced marriage, honour-based violence and this type of child exploitation.' She was immediately branded a racist and for the past few years the abuse hurled at her from all sides has been relentless. 'It's the anniversary of [her fellow Yorkshire MP] Jo Cox's death next week, I was coming through the Tube yesterday and this guy clocked me and put his hand in his pocket and I thought he was going to stab me. You have to recalibrate your head and accept that it is inevitable that someone is going to kill you. It's quite liberating, I am a fatalist. I went through all the panicking and alarms and it eats you up so you just have to resign yourself. The MP David Amess was also a friend so I know what can happen.' • How the child sex grooming gangs scandal unfolded over 20 years Amess was killed in his Southend West constituency. Is it worth Champion risking her life to keep raising the issue of grooming gangs? 'No. But I can't help it.' Does she now wish she hadn't become an MP? 'I genuinely can't answer that. I have tried to become a voice for those who don't have one. But the personal toll? It's living hell. The violence and threat of violence has got marginally better, but it has been horrendous.' The proliferation of grooming gangs dominated by Pakistani-heritage men, she tells me, is like the Post Office scandal and the contaminated blood scandal. 'Everyone now knows but no one does anything. The Times has been amazing and a few others. Once you start getting really involved you can't stop because it is such a devastating story. But there aren't 20 people behind me saying, 'I will take the baton, you have a break now'. The sacrifices and compromises you make to do this aren't worth it for most people.' Does she still worry even now after Baroness Casey of Blackstock's 200-page report was published this week into grooming gangs that she will be seen as a racist for saying they are predominantly made up of men from Pakistani families? 'I think we can now say more, I wrote a letter to The Times this week using the words Pakistani heritage, but I still thought long and hard about doing that in case people misconstrued it.' She must find it hard that it took Elon Musk tweeting to get politicians to focus on the abuse again. 'I jokingly say I will dance with the devil if it gets the ultimate aim and that is the closest I have come to doing it. His intervention has promoted more discussion … But I get upset when the right uses what has happened to these girls as a political tool.' Many on the left have warned that people like her are stirring up racial tensions and the bigots will use it to hound ethnic minorities. 'Trying to hide what is happening isn't helping anyone. I had a Pakistani female constituent come to me because she had gone to the police about her husband who had been abusing young girls the same age as her children. She had then been completely ostracised by her community for bringing shame on them and was getting terrorised in her home and wasn't getting enough protection … They must live with these men. How those in authority think not dealing with the crime is helping the Pakistani community is mind-blowing to me.' New generations are also suffering, she says. 'I started getting young women coming very distressed because they were having their babies taken off them because social services had decided they were unfit mothers. They would tell me 'I think it is because my boyfriend is Pakistani, and the council is racist'. But it's almost the opposite. The council was afraid to call these men out and saw the victims as having made bad lifestyle choices.' Does she feel that this is as much a class problem as a race problem? 'I don't think it is just working-class girls who have been sucked in, but they are less likely to know how to raise their voices and get people to listen. I've sat with their mothers who say, 'What do I do? I can't chain my daughter up.' One of the groomers' methods is to divide families and get kids put into care so they are even easier prey. I know one parent who had the money and could send her child to a relative out of the region to break the cycle of abuse. So, if you have some cash, you have more options.' But many remain stuck with the perpetrators of their misery, living in the same town. 'One of the girls who first talked to me said that the same gang members were coming up to her with her 12-year-old and taunting her, saying, 'Your daughter is about ready now,' and she was freaking out.' What haunts Champion most is that this kind of horrendous abuse is still going on over a decade after she became MP and tried to raise awareness. 'This is not in the past tense, we are still dealing with these cases in isolation, but they must be linked they are so similar.'' In her epic campaign to get attention for the victims, Champion has felt very alone. 'Andrew Norfolk, the late Times journalist, and Jayne Senior have been my two staunchest allies. When this all broke again I still only had two MPs get in touch with me.' • Andrew Norfolk obituary: Times reporter who exposed grooming gangs I ask whether she misses Norfolk, who died last month. her eyes well up. 'I normally do 12 to 14-hour days here but when I found out he died I was floored. I came home at 10.30pm and I couldn't stop sobbing. He was the only one who I could just talk to about it all without fearing being accused of being racist. Neither of us wanted to be known for this. I'm seen by many as the racist Sarah Champion. It's awful. I'm the opposite.' She hasn't had any therapy or help. 'I trained as a shrink; I appreciate the value of it, but I am not at a point where I can unpack this because I have too much to do. Andrew and I would get in touch when we needed each other. It was the knowledge that there was someone who understood what was going on and didn't believe I was nuts.' Champion has no children of her own. 'That has helped, I have one step of separation,' she says. She doesn't feel angry just lonely. 'It's not helpful to be angry. I just feel deeply disappointed and frustrated and wanted people to be better. I want them to give their best and they aren't. They take the job title and don't give a shit. I don't know how they can turn a blind eye.' When Sir Keir Starmer agreed to a national inquiry this week, she was pleased but when she switched on social media, she saw she was being monstered from both sides. 'Either I have done too much or not enough, I'm now blamed by left and right. But I hope the inquiry can take up the challenge. It's important that they are going back over 800 cases. 'People in the UK are very tolerant, but at our core we want to see fairness. If something is seen as unfair, we start kicking off so the fact that the law wasn't applied here without fear or favour is a big issue; the fact that people paid to do a job failed to do it, and worse covered up abuse, that's a big issue.' Wherever Champion goes in the world now, people ask her about the grooming gangs, she says. 'Unless we are seen to be dealing with it, this smear is going to be on our country and our reputation for years.'
Times
20 hours ago
- Times
Sarah Champion: I'm seen by many as a racist. I'm the opposite
Sarah Champion did not go into politics to wage war against child sex abuse rings or become a voice for vulnerable teenage girls preyed on by gangs of men of predominantly Pakistani origin who groomed, trafficked and raped them. When she became the Labour MP for Rotherham she did not know they existed. 'I had been running the local children's hospice as CEO when I became an MP in 2012 and I remember reading an article about this 15-year-old Rotherham girl who had a baby by any of three different men and was seen as a little scrubber, and I thought that's not right. Then a girl was found dead in a river, and they said she'd gone mad. Finally, a young white girl came to us with a poorly baby and her boyfriend was a much older Asian man; the relationship seemed odd.' Champion became increasingly uneasy that she did not know what was going on in her own constituency. 'At one of my first council meetings there was an item under 'risky business' and no one would explain it … Then I was in parliament and there was a session at a select committee on child sexual exploitation and Jayne Senior [a social worker] was giving evidence and it was horrifying, I felt mortified that no one seemed to care. Afterwards she suggested we meet on a canal boat in secrecy, and she told me what had been going on.' Slowly, survivors began to contact Champion. 'They were all ages. I met someone in her early eighties in Rotherham who described it happening to her by a Pakistani-origin man when she was younger. I met another woman at the back of Costa Coffee in her early twenties who went through everything in detail. Gradually I was collecting all this information, but I didn't know what to do.' Senior gave her a list of the men she had reported as abusers and the list of people she thought were complicit in the cover-up. 'I went to the police and people in the council saying I had serious concerns about a number of people, but I didn't get any responses. It was hard to know who to trust and I was nervous of giving away girls' names away. My life became one of shadows and pseudonyms.' • Baroness Casey: I feel rage on behalf of the abused girls This was not a race issue for Champion. 'To me this was just child abuse. It wasn't an ethnicity thing. The names weren't typically white English names, but what mattered was they were perpetrators of horrendous crimes. I'm a sloppy lefty to my core; I believe in equality and diversity. I just saw them as criminals.' The MP strongly believes Rotherham police, councillors and social workers should have called out these men as abusers decades ago. 'If they had taken these cases seriously when they began being reported in the 1960s, rather than telling these women they were silly young girls, then there wouldn't have been the boil of frustration there is now. The criminals would have gone to jail, the story wouldn't have escalated across the country, the Pakistani community wouldn't be vilified as though all of them are walking around intent on abusing white girls. They have done a massive disservice to this country.' In no way, Champion says, should these young girls be expected to take the blame. 'I remember when I was 15 and my friends and I were so excited when one of us got an older boyfriend with a car, some children are enamoured by older men, they like feeling special — before it all goes wrong — but we need to protect them.' The Labour MP stresses that she does not think this is about paedophiles. 'This is about pubescent girls aged 10 to 15 who are being groomed, they aren't little kids, and that is partly why it is overlooked as there is confusion over the age of consent, but it is 16 and for a reason.' • Gangs raped 'lost' girls because no one cared Watching these abused children struggle, as they grow up, has changed her mind about prostitution. 'I would make it a criminal offence for men to buy sex and decriminalise the women. I shifted my view largely because of the girls in Rotherham. When they were no longer pubescent and their value started to drop, they were so damaged and desperate, many were forced to turn to prostitution. They didn't have the capacity for consent, either because of the violence or drugs or alcohol.' She had the law changed so from 2017 every child received sex education at school about the nature of good relationships and not just biology, but Champion found it harder to make the girls' stories heard. 'Once I'd been told about it, I would see it everywhere walking round Rotherham, I thought how can everyone else not see. Then I began reading reports round the country and thinking that's another grooming gang, yet none of them called them out.' She started to believe there was a pattern to cases being reported not just in Rotherham but Rochdale, Telford and Oxford. In 2017, after the conviction of a sex-grooming gang in Newcastle upon Tyne who were largely of Pakistani origin, Champion cracked. 'I did the BBC Today programme because I became so frustrated. They called the day before and I said I am going to say they are Pakistani gangs and they were very concerned. I went on and it was fine, there were no recriminations, just supportive messages. Then The Sun got in touch, and I wrote a piece for them. And all hell broke loose.' Champion had written: 'Britain has a problem with British Pakistani men raping and exploiting white girls.' She was forced to quit as shadow equalities minister under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. She then said in an interview: 'What I'm really interested in is misogyny. It occurs in many different forms, but the most obvious forms are happening within some ethnic minority communities. I'm thinking female genital mutilation, forced marriage, honour-based violence and this type of child exploitation.' She was immediately branded a racist and for the past few years the abuse hurled at her from all sides has been relentless. 'It's the anniversary of [fellow Yorkshire MP] Jo Cox's death next week, I was coming through the Tube yesterday and this guy clocked me and put his hand in his pocket and I thought he was going to stab me. You have to recalibrate your head and accept that it is inevitable that someone is going to kill you. It's quite liberating, I am a fatalist. I went through all the panicking and alarms and it eats you up so you just have to resign yourself. The MP David Amess was also a friend so I know what can happen.' • How the child sex grooming gangs scandal unfolded over 20 years Amess was killed in his Southend West constituency. Is it worth Champion risking her life to keep raising the issue of grooming gangs? 'No. But I can't help it.' Does she now wish she hadn't become an MP? 'I genuinely can't answer that. I have tried to become a voice for those who don't have one. But the personal toll? It's living hell. The violence and threat of violence has got marginally better, but it has been horrendous.' The proliferation of grooming gangs dominated by Pakistani-heritage men, she tells me, is like the Post Office scandal and the contaminated blood scandal. 'Everyone now knows but no one does anything. The Times has been amazing and a few others. Once you start getting really involved you can't stop because it is such a devastating story. But there aren't 20 people behind me saying, 'I will take the baton, you have a break now'. The sacrifices and compromises you make to do this aren't worth it for most people.' Does she still worry even now after Baroness Casey of Blackstock's 200-page report was published this week into grooming gangs that she will be seen as a racist for saying they are predominantly made up of men from Pakistani families? 'I think we can now say more, I wrote a letter to The Times this week using the words Pakistani heritage, but I still thought long and hard about doing that in case people misconstrued it.' She must find it hard that it took Elon Musk tweeting to get politicians to focus on the abuse again. 'I jokingly say I will dance with the devil if it gets the ultimate aim and that is the closest I have come to doing it. His intervention has promoted more discussion … But I get upset when the right uses what has happened to these girls as a political tool.' Many on the left have warned that people like her are stirring up racial tensions and the bigots will use it to hound ethnic minorities. 'Trying to hide what is happening isn't helping anyone. I had a Pakistani female constituent come to me because she had gone to the police about her husband who had been abusing young girls the same age as her children. She had then been completely ostracised by her community for bringing shame on them and was getting terrorised in her home and wasn't getting enough protection … They must live with these men. How those in authority think not dealing with the crime is helping the Pakistani community is mind-blowing to me.' New generations are also suffering, she says. 'I started getting young women coming very distressed because they were having their babies taken off them because social services had decided they were unfit mothers. They would tell me 'I think it is because my boyfriend is Pakistani, and the council is racist'. But it's almost the opposite. The council was afraid to call these men out and saw the victims as having made bad lifestyle choices.' Does she feel that this is as much a class problem as a race problem? 'I don't think it is just working-class girls who have been sucked in, but they are less likely to know how to raise their voices and get people to listen. I've sat with their mothers who say, 'What do I do? I can't chain my daughter up.' One of the groomers' methods is to divide families and get kids put into care so they are even easier prey. I know one parent who had the money and could send her child to a relative out of the region to break the cycle of abuse. So, if you have some cash, you have more options.' But many remain stuck with the perpetrators of their misery, living in the same town. 'One of the girls who first talked to me said that the same gang members were coming up to her with her 12-year-old and taunting her, saying, 'Your daughter is about ready now,' and she was freaking out.' What haunts Champion most is that this kind of horrendous abuse is still going on over a decade after she became MP and tried to raise awareness. 'This is not in the past tense, we are still dealing with these cases in isolation, but they must be linked they are so similar.'' In her epic campaign to get attention for the victims, Champion has felt very alone. 'Andrew Norfolk, the late Times journalist, and Jayne Senior have been my two staunchest allies. When this all broke again I still only had two MPs get in touch with me.' • Andrew Norfolk obituary: Times reporter who exposed grooming gangs I ask whether she misses Norfolk, who died last month. her eyes well up. 'I normally do 12 to 14-hour days here but when I found out he died I was floored. I came home at 10.30pm and I couldn't stop sobbing. He was the only one who I could just talk to about it all without fearing being accused of being racist. Neither of us wanted to be known for this. I'm seen by many as the racist Sarah Champion. It's awful. I'm the opposite.' She hasn't had any therapy or help. 'I trained as a shrink; I appreciate the value of it, but I am not at a point where I can unpack this because I have too much to do. Andrew and I would get in touch when we needed each other. It was the knowledge that there was someone who understood what was going on and didn't believe I was nuts.' Champion has no children of her own. 'That has helped, I have one step of separation,' she says. She doesn't feel angry just lonely. 'It's not helpful to be angry. I just feel deeply disappointed and frustrated and wanted people to be better. I want them to give their best and they aren't. They take the job title and don't give a shit. I don't know how they can turn a blind eye.' When Sir Keir Starmer agreed to a national inquiry this week, she was pleased but when she switched on social media, she saw she was being monstered from both sides. 'Either I have done too much or not enough, I'm now blamed by left and right. But I hope the inquiry can take up the challenge. It's important that they are going back over 800 cases. 'People in the UK are very tolerant, but at our core we want to see fairness. If something is seen as unfair, we start kicking off so the fact that the law wasn't applied here without fear or favour is a big issue; the fact that people paid to do a job failed to do it, and worse covered up abuse, that's a big issue.' Wherever Champion goes in the world now, people ask her about the grooming gangs, she says. 'Unless we are seen to be dealing with it, this smear is going to be on our country and our reputation for years.'
The Guardian
2 days ago
- The Guardian
Grooming gang survivors make plea to ‘put politics aside' ahead of new inquiry
The political 'tug-of-war with vulnerable women' abused by grooming gangs must stop ahead of a new national inquiry into the crimes, survivors have told the Guardian. Holly Archer and Scarlett Jones, two survivors who played a key role in a 'gold-standard' local inquiry into the crime in Telford, have urged politicians and those without experience of abuse to allow women to shape the investigation. 'We have to put politics aside when it comes to child sexual exploitation, we have to stop this tug-of-war with vulnerable women,' said Archer, author of I Never Gave My Consent: A Schoolgirl's Life Inside the Telford Sex Ring. 'There are so many voices that need to be heard. There's some voices, though, that need to step away,' she said. 'We can do it, let us do it – we don't need you to speak on our behalf.' Jones, who works with Archer at the Holly Project, a support service helping survivors of child sexual exploitation (CSE) and their families, added: 'There are so many people out there at this moment exploiting the exploited – it's happening all the time.' The government announced on Monday that police would collect ethnicity data for all cases of child sexual abuse, after a report from Louise Casey found evidence of 'over-representation' of Asian and Pakistani heritage men among suspects in local data – collected in Greater Manchester, West and South Yorkshire. But she also urged the public to 'keep calm' over the ethnicity of grooming gang offenders, saying police data from one region suggested that the race of child abuse suspects was proportional with the local population. Archer, who founded the Holly Project, said the collection of ethnicity data of offenders had to improve but also urged those discussing child sexual exploitation not to rely on stereotypes surrounding perpetrators of CSE or their victims. While she was groomed from the age of 14 by men of Pakistani origin, the majority of men who went on to 'buy' her and rape her as a child were Chinese. Jones, author of Just a Girl, said she was first abused within her own white family, she was then enticed into a grooming gang. 'Nobody wants to know about that, because that doesn't meet their narrative,' said Archer. 'You're told that you're just not relevant, that it didn't really happen to you anyway. You're a liar. You're a fake person.' Archer said she no longer used social media after facing threats. 'I've been called a paedophile myself, a paedophile enabler, a grooming gang supporter. They said they hope my daughter gets raped. It's just constant.' She also described being given a leaflet by the far-right Britain First political movement in Telford after her book was published in 2016. 'They handed me leaflets that had quotes from my own book in them,' she said. 'They didn't know it was me, and they were telling me I was very pro what they were doing. It was insane.' Archer and Jones, who both use pseudonyms and are not pictured to protect themselves and their families, both welcomed the recommendations made by Casey, particularly the involvement of the National Crime Agency (NCA), which will lead a national push to reopen historic group-based child sexual abuse cases. All well as making sure the inquiry was victim-led, it also had to establish a definition for child sexual exploitation, which could differ in different agencies and police forces, said the women. The inquiry will see five existing local inquiries into grooming gangs coordinated by an independent commission with full statutory inquiry powers, which Archer said would provide much-needed accountability. 'It is really important that the localised aspect is not lost,' she said. In Telford, where a three-year independent inquiry into the scale of CSE concluded in 2022 that hundreds of children were sexually exploited over decades, victims had been consulted from the beginning, added Jones. Survivors, including the Holly Project, then helped the council to implement changes. 'At a national level, I don't want them to lose the part where survivors are actually the people telling them what needs to be done,' she said. The pair are both critical of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse lead by Prof Alexis Jay, which Jones described as 'absolutely pointless'. 'Years later, nothing has been done, none of the recommendations have been implemented,' she said. 'The worry is that that is what will happen again.' Above all, the pair want to see a shift in the national conversation so that children are always treated as victims, and not seen – as they were – as complicit in their own abuse. 'We need one statutory procedure that says, if a child is suspected to be at risk of exploitation, we are going to wrap care around them and their family to make sure that they are safe,' said Archer. 'We need survivors to feel safe enough just to live their life, be happy and know that they're worth having that happiness.' In the UK, the NSPCC offers support to children on 0800 1111, and adults concerned about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331. In the US, call or text the Childhelp abuse hotline on 800-422-4453. In Australia, children, young adults, parents and teachers can contact the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800, or Bravehearts on 1800 272 831, and adult survivors can contact Blue Knot Foundation on 1300 657 380. Other sources of help can be found at Child Helplines International
BBC News
4 days ago
- Politics
- BBC News
Telford child sex victims 'not surprised' by review findings
Victims of child sexual exploitation (CSE) in Telford say they are not surprised by the findings of a review into abuse carried out by grooming gangs in England and Casey's audit found the ethnicity of people involved was "shied away from" by authorities, which meant the scale of the issue could not be properly Holly Archer, Kate Elysia and Scarlett Jones said they were seen "as a problem" at the time which was something that had to welcomed a national statutory inquiry into grooming gangs, adding that survivors' experience had to be "at the heart of it all the way through". "I'm not surprised by anything that I've read in her report," campaigner Ms Archer, who was raped in Telford when she was a teenager, told BBC Radio Shropshire."And I think as a society, not just in terms of professionals but the community in general, the way we were seen, not as children but as a problem, is something that I'd like to see changed for the future."The government asked Baroness Casey to carry out the audit, examining existing data and evidence on the nature and scale of group-based child sexual abuse, in January. Her key findings prompted Prime Minister Keir Starmer to announce a national inquiry, saying he accepted the reports Elysia said while she was glad there was to be one, she was quite angry it was not done earlier and the government had to be pushed to said she was also worried for victims who had to revisit their traumatic experiences. Ms Jones said the only way for change to happen and to "make the recommendations meaningful is to have survivor input".She agreed the collecting of data was flawed with ethnicity not recorded in two-thirds of cases, and questioned why the reporting of Asian grooming gangs and white ones was different. "If you're going to collect data then lets collect it all together, lets stop reporting as different things when actually they're all the same," she also needed to be prepared "to take that challenge on", Ms Archer of grooming gangs 'shied away from', Casey report says'Little people can make big waves' - sex abuse survivorTown now 'admirable model' in tackling child sex abuseBaroness Casey noted how victims had been referred to by some authorities at the time as the problem and were blamed for what Elysia said she was "absolutely disgusted" with the way adults in authority had treated the child victims."I was one of those once, and now I'm an adult and I also work for services and I can't believe people have been ignored, children have been ignored and treated the way that they have been treated," she said people in the authorities at the time should have done more."They should be the ones who are able to step up and realise they should be doing the right thing."Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said between 800 to 1000 cases will be reopened as part of the Ms Jones and Ms Archer said it must not lose sight of "local need" and the role Telford played so they are not "swallowed up" with other areas and what went wrong was heard. Follow BBC Shropshire on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
Daily Mail
4 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Grooming gangs reviewer Baroness Casey condemns woke 'do-gooders' who failed victims - revealing that she found 'Pakistani' Tippexed out of file
The architect of the bombshell grooming gangs review has condemned 'do-gooders' who ignored ethnic factors for fear of being branded racist. Baroness Casey vented fury at the failure to tackle the issues over a decade, saying she was 'raging' on behalf of the victims. Speaking following the publication of her report, the Whitehall troubleshooter revealed she had found the word 'Pakistani' Tippexed out of a child sex abuse file. But Lady Casey said turning a blind eye to many offenders having Asian heritage only gave racists 'more ammunition'. The long-awaited review was published yesterday, finding that councils, police forces and the Home Office repeatedly 'shied away' from dealing with 'uncomfortable' questions about the ethnicity of rapists preying on thousands of vulnerable girls. Despite years of warnings, she said, the quality of data collected at a national level remained 'woeful and a dereliction of public duty'. With ethnicity still recorded in only a third of cases, the baroness said it was impossible to be certain about patterns of offending at a national level. The report said there was a 'blind spot' in the way institutions approached child sexual exploitation But her report highlighted data collected by police in Rotherham, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire which showed a 'disproportionate number of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds' among those suspected of grooming offences. In Rotherham, an investigation into historic cases by the National Crime Agency found that two-thirds of suspects were of Pakistani heritage, despite them accounting for just 4 per cent of the local population. The report also examined a dozen major live police operations into grooming gangs and found a 'significant proportion' of suspects are asylum seekers or were born abroad. In interviews following the publication, Lady Casey said that 'establishing the facts' on ethnicity could 'take the pain out of this'. 'I think you've got sort of do-gooders that don't really want this to be found because, you know, 'Oh, God, then all the racists are going to be more racist',' she told Sky News. 'Well, actually, people that are racist are going to use this anyway. All you're doing with the hate mongers and the racists is giving them more ammunition.' The cross-bench peer said she came across examples of people deliberately ignoring racial factors in Rotherham. 'I was following through on a children's file in archive and found the word 'Pakistani' Tippexed out,' she said. 'I thought whoever did that inadvertently was giving ammunition to the English Defence League that were every week, in and out, campaigning and doing their stuff in that town. 'I think the problem is that people are worried about being called racist.... if good people don't grasp difficult things, bad people will, and that's why we have to do it as a society.' Lady Casey also swiped at the Tories for 'politicising' the response to the report, rather than 'coming together' to fix the issues. Speaking on BBC Newsnight, the peer said: 'What really has got to me a bit about doing this particulatr report is that ten years ago I could have been clearer about what was happening in Rotherham. 'I said at the time there are national implications, this isn't the only place this is happening in. 'Over a long period of time there have been lots of initiatives, lots of reviews... and yet it doesn't feel it has come to anything. She added: 'I am raging actually on behalf of the victims... it's been awful to realise that as a society we still don't see these girls as girls.' In one case in Newcastle, an asylum seeker convicted of offences 'spoke in a derogatory way about lack of morals in British girls and the ease with which he was able to access sex, drugs and alcohol'. Lady Casey said it was 'not racist to want to examine the ethnicity of offenders'. But she pointed to a culture of public bodies avoiding the issue 'for fear of appearing racist, raising community tensions or causing community cohesion problems'. Her report said most local reviews had shown 'a palpable discomfort in any discussion of ethnicity'. And it said 'flawed data' was being 'used repeatedly to dismiss claims about 'Asian grooming gangs' as sensational, biased or untrue'. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper issued a public apology on behalf of the state to the victims of the gangs. She said she offered 'an unequivocal apology for the unimaginable pain and suffering that you have suffered, and for the failure of our country's institutions, over decades, to prevent that harm and keep you safe'. Ms Cooper said she was accepting the recommendations of Lady Casey's 'damning' report in full – including ordering a public inquiry which Labour has resisted. The report triggered angry clashes in the Commons, where Kemi Badenoch rounded on Keir Starmer for smearing those pressing for a public inquiry of jumping on a 'far-Right bandwagon'. The national inquiry will be time-limited and is likely to investigate offending in only a handful of local areas, despite warnings that similar activity may have taken place in 50 towns and cities across the country. But it will have the power to compel witnesses to give evidence.
